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[keys jingling and light buzzing]
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- 323 to 584.
[dramatic music]
[buzzer buzzing]
- Baby girl,
call me goo-goo mommy.
[laughter] You are not gonna believe this.
Niggas is keeping a lot of motherfuckers on the payroll.
Soon as you see the handcuffs go ca-clink,
you hear the cash register go cha-ching.
Ca-clink, cha-ching.
Trust and believe most of y'all niggas
ain't sitting up in here for punishment.
Y'all sitting up in here for profit.
[drums rattling]
- That day, I prayed 'cause I knew I was--
it felt like a calling.
It felt like it was more than a performance.
It felt like-- like a mission.
[soft dramatic music]
Like, I was on a mission to do something.
Because of the significance of the land I was on.
It was historical.
but this performance at Angola
I knew was historical.
♪
- Hey, how y'all doing? - Hi, good morning.
- I'm good. Can I see your ID please?
- Sure thing.
- No, ma'am. - I know she got a camera.
- Yes, ma'am.
- We ain't pointing that camera in here.
- No, ma'am. No, ma'am.
Even though you look fabulous. - Unless you want it to.
- Let me know, so I get my good side.
- Ooh. [laughter]
We're coming here on the strength of Norris Henderson.
- I've been released from Angola 18 years.
is bringing people back to give them a sense of
who's actually here and why do we send people to prison--
to make them start questioning what they think prisons are
and how they behave.
Angola's 18,000 acres of farmland.
Angola was a plantation.
- It was named after the slaves
It transformed into a prison
You see all those cows, all that cattle?
So everything that they grow
and herd on this land
is to consume.
- Cotton, corn, watermelon.
Okra, tomatoes.
- You know, the residents, they take care of all of this.
They take care of all the grounds.
They take care of all the cattle.
They got a camel.
A motherfucking camel... [laughs]
- A camel? - They got a camel. A camel.
'Cause one year they did the Nativity play
and they got an actual camel for the dramatization.
And they just kept the camel.
We gonna see the camel later. We gonna see the camel.
Oh, they got a camel. They got a camel.
Look, look, look, they got a camel.
- There's the camel.
- There goes the motherfucking camel.
Y'all see the camel? That's the camel.
- 323 to 584. [radio chirps]
[buzzer buzzing]
- All the other COs, they know me.
As much as I come up here to see you, I never had a problem.
I'm thinking she gonna look through my bag
like a normal person.
This bitch takes all my contents,
dumps everything all out on the conveyer belt.
I was like, "Ooh."
And I took one for the team 'cause of you.
Oh, no, I peeked her game.
She wanted me to go off on her,
so she could dead this visit
and then take that shit out on you later on.
Look, I took all the contents of my bag,
I put them right back inside nice and slow.
And I had a free trial Jenny Craig fitness coupon
and I left that shit right on the conveyor belt.
[laughter]
'Cause you need to work some shit out.
People couldn't understand why I was so excited
about performing at Angola,
but this was my dream to be on a plantation,
a prison plantation performing a "Peculiar Patriot."
Not just perform... [chuckles]
But to activate.
I knew what I was doing.
♪
- He's hoeing that field, man,
people be falling out in that field.
before they take care of us, man.
on horseback with rifles--
I mean, it just looks like
- Majority is all Blacks in the field.
and you had ten white boys.
They're warehousing us, bro.
- In here, I see a lot of guys here.
- This lady's gonna be dazzling everybody tomorrow.
- Thank you. - Miss Liza Jessie Peterson.
- Thank you so much for that wonderful introduction.
- Let me ask you this. - Sure.
- If this was your last time to ever say anything,
what would be the last thing you would say?
What would you tell us? - Mm.
Harriet Tubman, she was born into slavery.
That's all she knew. - Right.
- But she saw something bigger than what she saw
with her own physical eyes. - Right.
- So just because you see prison with your physical eyes,
what do you see beyond that?
'Cause if she could see freedom when all she saw
and a world without mass incarceration.
♪
'cause I can speak for every individual in here...
Because I'm the voice of the youngsters
♪
We need help.
[upbeat percussive music]
- 1998, I was auditioning, studying acting,
of becoming an actress and going to Hollywood.
And I just love the energy
of the whole poetry scene that I was in at the time.
I think therefore you are because I am.
Don't let this apron fool you.
Excuse me. Ooh.
Click it on. Get the money.
And so prison, jail,
Poker face. Poker face.
Mass incarceration was not even in the lexicon.
This is, you know, pre-Michelle Alexander's book,
"The New Jim Crow," so there wasn't even language.
All I was looking for at the time
so that I could still audition.
at a school called Island Academy
Getting the thoughts from up here
which are in your head and getting it onto the paper.
And I was terrified.
You know, I just had this totally ignorant idea
It was a correctional officer said to me,
"You don't know where you are, do you?"
I said, "Yeah, I'm at Rikers Island."
He says, "No."
He said, "You're on a modern day plantation."
And he pointed to the boys who were 16, 17, 18 years old.
He said, "That's the new cotton.
They're the new crops."
[cell doors slam shut]
[buzzer buzzing]
Billions just off the telephone calls.
Not to mention the construction company contracts,
the people that build these prisons,
that's a multi-million dollar contract.
The company that makes that jumpsuit you wear
and them skippies on your feet.
All them cookies and potato chips
and hair grease and toothpaste.
All that shit y'all be buying at commissary,
that's a multi-million dollar contract.
The money that's made off of prisons--
it was heartbreaking and infuriating.
I had, like, a three-ring binder
I was just printing out articles,
discarded in prison for nothing, you know?
For a blunt, for a joint.
In New York state, the majority of drug dealers is white.
But out of all the drug offenders
locked up in New York state prison,
the majority something, like, 95% is Black and Latino.
Everybody doing some crime, but we the ones doing the time.
In these underpopulated rural white towns,
they get to count the number of inmates and they sentences.
So on paper, look like they got
more residents than they actually do.
Therefore they get more public funding and government money
and they get more representatives
in the state capitol.
And some of these towns have more inmates than residents.
I knew I had to do something with this information
and then, I'm literally I'm in the classroom
and I'm seeing these children who are just warehoused.
All these Black, Black, Black, Black, Black faces.
They're targeting our babies.
I was like, "Fuck this shit."
I was like, "No. No."
Every time you said it, your energy went like this.
Okay? Constantly elevating.
Rising. Spiraling.
Okay, you gonna give us another one?
- For the love of my people. - For the love of who?
- My people. - For the love of who?
- My people. - All right.
But where does love start?
You do not know? You know.
[soft dramatic music]
It was an assignment to teach three weeks
'cause all the teachers kept passing me around.
They're getting booked on television shows
and they're doing movies
and we all studying acting together.
And I call my best friend up and I'm crying.
And I'm crying and shit.
And she laughed at me.
I'm on the phone with her. I'm, like, in deep pain.
She said, "Bitch, you got a story to tell.
Write that shit down." Click.
When she said, "Write that shit down..."
It was like a stream of consciousness.
I just put the rage on the page.
That was the beginnings of "The Peculiar Patriot."
- So I'm looking at the flag
was the flag and the barbed wire braided hair,
And I'm saying to myself...
"is about to come into a place like this...
- You can't go in there and be fake.
You have to embody that truth.
- By the time I was seeing your flyer,
So I really didn't know much about it.
They only talked about it the day before on the radio.
- Mm, me, ma, moe.
Ti, ta, toe.
She sells seashells.
She sells...
I'm rehearsing in the chapel on the day of.
And the chapel is huge.
I was, like, I'll be happy if, like,
I don't know, 100, 200 men show.
[enunciating] So I put a little honey.
Shiny black blade.
So we got two film crews--
which is manned by the incarcerated men
to the different housing units in the day room
can watch it on television and see it.
They were shutting our cameras down.
trying to negotiate to still make it happen.
getting off the buses, walking behind me--
old men, young men,
men in wheelchairs, men in canes.
They took my cameras away, but they didn't take me away.
So I'm still here for them.
- Capacity is supposed to be around 800.
And all the pews were packed, you know,
Bam, she hit the stage,
the energy in the room shifts.
And her ability to make me feel that somebody else
stood the hair up on my neck.
- Everybody clung on to every word that she said.
- They was talking back to me, jabbing each other.
They talk--you know, like, they having--
we having a good time.
And I left that shit right on the conveyor belt.
a roar laughing in the whole building,
- She ain't have money for bail
'cause she said she ain't do it.
that had been deep, you know?
grievances amongst guys in here silently.
Yes, let's pray on it.
Watching this performance at certain points 'cause every--
everybody who was here has seen.
- The constitution says that slavery is illegal
- But when she went to talking about how the system was
- Same nigga, same zero pact,
[cheers and applause]
- Some people hear the truth and will applaud that truth.
Some people hear that very same truth
and they get rocks in their jaws.
- That kind of energy in that room--oh, oh, indeed.
- I go in the back, get ready for the next scene.
- They informed me that,
"Hey, you guys, let's shut it down."
My first thought was, "Why?"
- Norris comes out.
I hear him.
He gets on the microphone.
He said, "Um, you know, there's been an emergency.
- I felt kind of awkward
they knew it wasn't that.
that was being espoused that somebody couldn't handle.
- There was a loud, "Boo." [crowd booing]
'cause everybody knew why it was being shut down.
- "Fuck this shit. Aw, let them finish the play.
in cacophony rising in the chapel.
[crowd clamoring]
I didn't even give it any thought.
It was instinctive. I said, "Bam."
I just threw my fist in the air.
She threw that fist up and I threw my fist up.
- The TV room, the guys
They was clapping. It got loud.
Up, up, up. Sit down, sit down, sit down."
- Security was afraid.
They couldn't do it. We wasn't even sitting down.
- You got a building of 800 people screaming
standing on their feet, you understand?
- And I saluted them 'cause I knew I was
And I said, "Oh, they awake now."
Bam. And I did my job.
- I was driving and I was, like, "Wait, hold on."
I'd never heard him that excited.
- Wow.
And I found you. - You sure did.
- When you left there, the energy level was so high.
There was discussions in the dormitory.
that was talking about this production.
and you hooked the cables up in us.
- That story from that day, I'ma tell you,
the excitement that I saw from folks after that,
it done what it was supposed to do.
It done exactly what it supposed to do
because if it didn't,
we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.
- This is my Tony Award.
[laughs] Literally.
After my performance at Angola,
one of the brothers, he said,
"I have a gift that I want to send you."
It says, "Liza Jessie Peterson, the sister who brings hope
"and knowledge to incarcerated African Americans
held in captivity."
And then he said,
"'Cause I'm public enemy." [laughs]
There's a picture of Harriet Tubman,
Malcolm X, and Nat Turner
'cause he said that I embody all three of those.
So he made this in woodshop, and when I got this box...
[laughs] And I opened it...
I'm sorry.
He made it a bank. It's a bank.
It's, like, a piggy bank.
Because of what I deposited in them.
And there's a little slit at the top
to put money in.
Of all the souls that I deposited in...
This is the greatest validation
that I've ever received.
This my award.
[soft dramatic music]
- Man, listen.
are first offenders.
the sum total of your life in one mistake.
A lot of brothers, and I mean a lot of brothers,
And when they get out, they recognize
to an even larger one.
I have no interest in getting out of prison.
I want to be free.
[mellow jazzy music]
- I finished Larry's patch. Yup.
I gave him a white candle.
To stay in the light.
For positive vibes.
No, girl, he's still in solitary.
Yes, let's pray on it. Mm-hmm.
Girl, when you come home, I'ma take you
to the seafood joint up in the Bronx where they serve
the Alaskan crab legs already out the shell.
It'll be sopping in the garlic seasoning butter.
Hell, yeah, we goin'.
You got less than three years left, bookie.
There's light at the end of the tunnel for you.
You gonna be with him soon. Amen. Claim it.
God is good.
♪